Everyone loves a great game day outfit, but no one more than Jack Engstrom. A lifelong Trojan, Engstrom turned his school spirit into a thriving full time vintage clothing business. Sideline Closet sources vintage USC merchandise to revive the nostalgia and quality of past generations.
For 8 years, Engstrom has grown Sideline Closet from giving away a few T-shirts to friends to 10,000 followers and widely attended pop-ups around Los Angeles. In high school, he began collecting basketball shoes and vintage sports memorabilia.
“I kind of just got hooked immediately,” Engstrom said. “I had no idea what I was doing when I first started…so it was definitely a big learning curve, like trial and error of buying things and kind of learning how old things were.”
Engstrom is from Palos Verdes, California and grew up surrounded by the “whole Trojan lifestyle.” So, when he got into USC in 2019, he naturally landed on the USC niche.
“I just was really passionate about it because of my family ties to USC and … all those memories I had as a kid, and I just wanted to share that nostalgic feeling with people to the best of my ability,” he said.
When Engstrom was a freshman, he brought some of his clothes to the dorms and people were immediately hooked. “I was like, whoa, this could be something,” he said.
Sideline Closet has grown exponentially ever since. Its customers, from USC students to fans, value the quality of Engstrom’s clothes and connect with Sideline Closet’s passion for supporting Trojans.
“It really brings back my childhood” said Peter “42” Hernandez, of Flower Street Barbers. As a lifelong fan of USC football, finding pieces from the games that he watched with his uncle as a kid is particularly sentimental.
“It makes people want to be part of something that you can’t remake, and that’s part of what Jack has,” he said.
While much of Engstrom’s passion comes from his love of USC sports, he discovered the environmental benefits of secondhand clothing while building his business.
“In the last few years, I’ve been all over the world to different manufacturing factories for fashion, and I’ve seen the waste from that firsthand,” Engstrom said.
This experience opened his eyes to the larger impacts of fast fashion and inspired Engstrom to use biodegradable shipping supplies. “If you buy a shirt from me, everything in the package, including the package itself, is not going to go in the landfill,” he said.
Sideline Closet hit 10,000 followers a few weeks ago. Engstrom is proud of this milestone yet still sees more room to grow.
“The biggest thing right now is just expanding our relationships with different people and doing more events in person,” he said. He’s also working on a website to streamline the ordering process.
Ultimately, the goal is simple. Engstrom hopes to “make sure more people find us so that they can share the same nostalgia that I had when I started this business,” he said.
Edited by Andriana Yatsyshyn and Lindsay Augustine.